Libraries' site rides wave of popularity off Coldplay lyrics

Coldplay hid lyrics to A Sky Full of Stars in the Tauranga City Library

Tauranga Libraries' brush with Coldplay stardom last week registered a staggering reach of 1.7 million people through its Facebook page.

The raw power of social media was illustrated when two Bay women won an international treasure hunt on Thursday, May 1, by finding handwritten lyrics by the band Coldplay in the library.

As the story spread worldwide, fans zeroed in on the Tauranga Libraries' Facebook page, which in the previous week had reached a modest 1420 Facebook users.

"This is what happens when an international band increases your profile," libraries' manager Jill Best told the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend. By the end of last week, the reach of the story had risen to nearly 1.74 million Facebook users, which included users linking the story to friends.

However, the popularity of the story did not make much difference to the library's total page likes, which rose by 20 over the previous week. Ms Best expected to see the figures settling down this week to something approaching normal.

The city library made headlines when it became one of nine libraries worldwide chosen to hide the lyrics in.

The UK band began posting clues on Twitter to promote its upcoming album, Ghost Stories.

Tauranga fan Lauren Bracken had been following the lyrics hunt in the "small chance" that one of the lyric sheets was in New Zealand.

She was in Auckland when the seventh clue made it clear the lyrics were in her hometown library, so dispatched friend Annalie Tennant to the library while doing more research to pin down the name of the book in which the lyrics were stashed.

Annalie found the lyrics to A Sky Full of Stars inside The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.